Game Topz (gamtopz@gmail.com)

In this week’s episode of the TouchArcade Show we dive straight into some reader emails, and I want to thank everyone who wrote into our show this week to give us their thoughts on the Great Banter Debate and just to say hello. And speaking of reader feedback, we’ve added a new feature to this week’s post in the form of Show Notes down below the podcast links, so you can see the articles that we’re discussing during the show. Not really sure why we weren’t just doing that anyway, but I digress. After we hit all the big mobile gaming topics of the week, we finish things off with some discussion of last week’s Xbox event and the future of next gen consoles. Don’t forget to shoot us emails with any questions, feedback, or anything else relevant or irrelevant to podcast@toucharcade.com . We read ’em all, and love decoding messages written entirely in emoji. As always, you can listen to us with the links below… And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and/or drop us a review in iTu...

There’s just something about dogfighting in space that lends itself to video games. From the earliest days, piloting a space ship and blasting down aliens, or asteroids, or other enemy ships has been a common theme for video games, and the genre really reached a new level when 3D gaming started to take hold. Imagine a first-person perspective right from the cockpit of your very own cool spaceship as you fly through space battling against all manor of cool enemies. These dreams were realized with games like X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter which put you right in the cockpit of iconic ships from the Star Wars universe. That game also served as inspiration for a new space fighting game called Interloper ($5.99) from Anchorite Games, which arrived in the App Store this week. Sweet cockpit view in a bad ass spaceship? Check. Tons of cool weaponry to blast bad guys with? Check. Huge space stations? Massive explosions and particle effects galore? Check to all that. Interloper delivers an action-pa...

Light and dark, sun and shadow… the classic metaphors for life and death. Except, in Felix the Reaper ($3.99) , they are not just metaphors, they are also the basic premise of the game. Players will guide Felix, a new field Reaper in the Ministry of Death, as he orchestrates ever more elaborate deaths, intent on impressing his lady-love in the Ministry of Life, Betty. The catch? The two may never meet—Felix must remain in the shadows, while Betty dances in sunlit meadows. Felix the Reaper is a 3D puzzler in the style of Sokoban. Promising shadowy puzzles, comedy blacker than a city sky at midnight, and a dancing reaper, there are a lot of places it could fall short. Unfortunately, fall short it does… where art, music, and animation are high points, the gameplay itself leaves much to be desired. Each chapter starts a little before a character’s timely death, and each level therein we guide Felix through shadows, moving barrels here, mirrors there, setting the stage just so for th...

Insomniac Games are largely known for their output on Sony’s PlayStation platforms over the past two-plus decades, including franchises like Spyro the Dragon , Ratchet & Clank , and Resistance: Fall of Man . Heck, they are so intertwined with PlayStation gaming that Sony themselves gobbled the studio up last year, putting them under the Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios umbrella. However, in the seven or so years preceding all that, Insomniac did try to diversify itself by releasing games on multiple platforms including Xbox, PC, and yes even mobile. Back in 2015 one of their newest mobile releases was a clever “simultaneous runner" called Digit & Dash where you had two control two cute little robots independently while they were running up opposite sides of a vertical platform at the same time. We enjoyed it a lot in our review from back then, and here is the original launch trailer for Digit & Dash so you can see what it’s like in action. Anyway,...

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for July 31st, 2020. In today’s article, we’ve got a full review of Fairy Tail courtesy of Mikhail, summaries of all of the new releases that hit the eShop today, a little bit of news, and a bunch of new sales to check out. It’s a big fella today, of that there is no question. Let’s get into it! News The Amazing Anti-RPG ‘Moon’ Comes West on August 27th I don’t normally do news on Fridays, but I’ll make an exception this time. Regular readers know I love the works of Onion Games and Yoshiro Kimura. They just have a ridiculous amount of heart, for lack of a more scientific term. The latest game from Onion actually reaches back into the past, when Mr. Kimura worked with a number of other people on a game at the now-defunct Love-de-Lic. Moon was a very unique PlayStation game that questioned a lot of the things we just accept in RPGs, and in doing so served as an inspiration for titles no less famous than Undertale . Bu...

Wave Light Games has been showering us with excellent tactical strategy games on mobile for years now, and after taking the plunge into publishing games on the Nintendo Switch, they’re back at the iOS wheel again with a new game called Hyena Squad . If you’re familiar with Wave Light’s previous games, you probably have at least some idea of what’s in store here. It’s a turn-based tactical strategy game! But aside from that comfortable general description, there’s actually several new things going on in Hyena Squad . One of the biggest is that it takes place on a regular squared grid rather than the hexagon-based grids of previous Wave Light games. It’s set in the same universe as Strike Team Hydra and features the same alien race as the antagonists, but the story instead focuses on a band of mercenaries who are on a mission to bust a mafia boss out of a deep space prison. You can see Hyena Squad in action in the following trailer. Another change with Hyena Squad is in the overall...

Back in March this year, Netease and Marvel Games revealed Marvel Duel which is a strategy card game for iOS and Android. At the time, a closed beta was planned with no details on a global launch. Marvel Duel features more than 150 Marvel heroes and villains for players to collect with 3D animations for battle skills. Today, the game has launched in select countries on both iOS and Android for free. Beginning today, players who login can get 10 general expansion packs for the game. Watch the new trailer for Marvel Duel below: Marvel Duel has launched in Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and Malaysia on iOS and Android. Check it out on the App Store for iOS here and Google Play for Android here . As of now, the game isn’t planned for a global launch according to Netease. Hopefully it does launch outside those countries in the future. Check out the official website for Marvel Duel here . Did you end up trying any of the betas for Marvel Duel ?

Meteorfall: Journey ($3.99) from slothwerks released a while ago and is an excellent card-based dungeon crawler. Since then, a follow-up in the form of Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale was revealed with a PC release that happened soon after. Slothwerks recently began taking sign-ups for a beta for the mobile version of Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale . Today, pre-registrations for the Android version have gone live on Google Play ahead of its release. A lot of people have been wondering how Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale will transition from landscape to portrait for mobile screens. Watch the trailer below for Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale to see some gameplay for it: The best part about the Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale port on iOS and Android is that progress will carry over from the Steam version. The mobile version will also be playable offline without issues as confirmed on Google Play. Check it out on Steam here . A release date for iOS and Android hasn’t been announced but it should arrive in...

Friday is usually when Apple adds a new game to the service alongside an update or two for existing games. Today, Grindstone from Capybara Games just got a massive update. ‘The Daily Grind’ update for Grindstone follows thee ‘Back to the Grind too’ update that arrived a little while ago. Today’s update brings in a new Daily Grind mode, 50 new levels, new gold item blueprints, and a lot more. The Daily Grind mode includes leaderboards. With the 50 new levels, Grindstone now has 230 levels. Watch the trailer for today’s update below: Barring the new levels and the new mode, this update also brings in the new Pickaxe and Goldrush Garb resources and five new Gold Item Blueprints. Grindstone is easily one of my favourite games on iOS in general. It is great to see it continue to get new content and support. Check it out on Apple Arcade here . Here’s our forum thread for Grindstone . For all other Apple Arcade related things, check out our dedicated Apple Arcade forum for discussio...

Just about 4 years ago developer Sky Ship Studios set out to create a digital version of the popular table top game Gloom from designer Keith Baker and Atlas Games. They ran a successful crowdfunding campaign during the summer of 2016 and then, about two years later, the digital version of Gloom was released on Steam . Hooray! But the story doesn’t end there, because part of the promise from the crowdfunding campaign was to also bring digital versions of Gloom to both iOS and Android. Well as you probably know, these types of things always take longer than you think they will, and so nearly two years after the Steam launch of Gloom the iOS and Android versions have officially launched to the public this week. Gloom for everybody! But wait, what the heck is Gloom , anyway? Well as I said previously, it was originally a physical card game designed by Keith Baker and published by Atlas Games back in 2004. Its premise is… well, it’s pretty gloomy, to be honest. Each player takes co...

It was just about two years ago that Brazilian developer Cat Nigiri announced that their in-development tactical strategy puzzler Keen: One Girl Army would be heading to all major platforms in 2019, including mobile. Well as we’re all so painfully aware, the year is 2020 and so that means Keen didn’t quite make it out as intended. However, just last month Keen made its official launch on Steam after literal years of being in beta, and then earlier this month the game also made its way to the Nintendo Switch, and our own Shaun Musgrave “ found it worth the dip ." Now hot on the heels of those releases comes the iOS version of Keen: One Girl Army ($7.99) which has just arrived in the App Store today. Keen is basically a block-sliding puzzle game mixed with tactical combat and a story-driven campaign. You can get a sense for it in this launch trailer for the Steam and Switch versions. While generally your movement also acts as your attack on enemies, Keen throws in various...

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for July 30th, 2020. In today’s article, we’ve got summaries of all of today’s new releases. There are a handful of really good ones in there, so make sure you check them out. Besides that, it’s just the lists of incoming and outgoing sales, with some nice discounts on Dragon Ball games, Pokken , and Psikyo shoot-em-ups. That’s all we’ve got time for however, as I’ve got a small party to attend in honor of my lack of dying for another full trip around the sun. Let’s blow out the candles! New Releases Nowhere Prophet ($24.99) SwitchArcade Highlight! Okay, so fair warning: this game is one of those rock-hard challenges that will seriously tick you off at times. It’s a deck-building roguelite, following in the lines of things like Slay the Spire but also feeling an awful lot like FTL at times mechanically. Which is to say that you have to think very strategically but also accept that you can do everything right and sti...